I was watching TV show on The History Channel called "Written in Bone: A Save Our History Special," and at least one claimed made appears to be unlikely. A corpse was found at the site of the original Jamestown fort. It was a teenage boy (about 15 years old) who had lived most of his life in England - he came to North America in the early 1600s. There was a arrow in his knee, and it was determined to be of native American origin. However, the "experts" investigating did not think this kind of insult was enough to kill the boy (who they said may have been the first colonist to have been killed in clashes with natives) . They noticed dental abscesses, and declared that he must have been in terrible pain from the inflammation. Though they did not explain exactly how this could occur, they claimed that the arrow to the knee must have been some sort of proverbial last straw. They did not put forth any alternative explanation, for example, that the tip of the arrow may have been coated with some sort of highly poisonous substance or a substance that might kill days later (such as fecal matter).
My own experience contradicts this claim. In late 2004, part of a filling fell out of one of my teeth. I remember that at that time, another tooth was bothering me. When I bit down on something small and hard (like the stem remnant of a raisin), pain occurred in this other tooth. This continued until late 2007, when I felt pain but also some sort of structural change, so I went back to the dentist. She did an X-ray and determined that there was extensive decay. Nothing could be done until the "infection" was cleared, and so she prescribed antibiotics, which worked fine. The only symptoms I felt, aside from the pain when biting down on a hard object in a specific area of that tooth, was a mild pain if I opened my mouth wide, which I only did on rare occasions if something was stuck in a tooth and I needed to try and dislodge it. There was no discernible inflammation. What had happened was that in late 2007, when I felt a structural change, part of the existing filling, which had been undermined by the decay/bacteria, had collapsed inward into the tooth. Apparently, that area of the tooth was "dead," and so there was no pain involved. Thus, I know that there was extensive decay/"infection" for at least three years, and yet nothing like what the Jamestown "experts" thought had to happen in fact happened.
Why? Because this is an aspect of the "arachidonic acid overload" situation, in which "inflammation" can be so problematic and dangerous. The "James Fort Boy," as they called him, did not have arachidonic acid in his cells, as I did not in late 2004. Moreover, I also had a wisdom tooth extracted several months ago, and though the dentists talked of pain and inflammation, I took 4 aspirin in total and there were no symptoms of note. A relative who is a bit younger also had a wisdom tooth extracted (a couple of weeks earlier) and he did have the kind of symptoms the dentist warned me of, and as you might have guessed by now, he eats a "typical American diet" and must have arachidonic acid in his cells (he also has persistent "colds" and "infections," whereas I have not had any in several years now, though I used to get at least two colds a year). As a historian, I find these episodes especially interesting, because so many people think that history that is more than a few decades old is "set in stone," whereas it is often the case that the cement being used is not only still wet, but it is being cast in a faulty way. |
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